In Mother's Footsteps

Daughters Get Day Of On-the-job Encouraging

April 29, 1993|By Elizabeth Birge.

Lanaire Timcke's Wednesday started out like any other day.

Up at 6:45 a.m., breakfast with her mother, Barbara Fry-Timcke, a little mother-daughter conversation ("Do you mind if I brush your hair?" inquired Mom, " 'cause I think it's a little lopsided."), then out the door together by 8 a.m.-just in time for one to catch the bus to school and the other to catch the "L" to work.

But on this Wednesday, after the 11-year-old pulled on her coat and grabbed her knapsack, she took a different path.

Instead of heading for the bus that takes her to her 5th-grade class at Skinner School, Lanaire and her mother turned the corner together and rode the "L" to work.

An estimated more than 500,000 girls across the country joined them.

"Take Our Daughters to Work" day started out as a New York City event. The Ms. Foundation for Women spearheaded the day as a way to make girls ages 9 to 15 feel valued, improve their self-esteem and expose them to the work world.

But as word of "Take Our Daughters to Work Day" spread, companies and individuals across the country and the world made plans to join in. Harris Bank, 111 W. Monroe St., where Fry-Timcke is assistant vice president of human resources, was one of them.

Other Chicago-area companies that participated included Sears, Roebuck and Co.; Ameritech; Hewitt Associates; the Chicago Mercantile Exchange; the Chicago Park District; the "Jenny Jones" show; and a host of others.

Like many participating organizations, Harris Bank's program for the 150 girls it hosted included building tours, an overview of the business and career counseling to make girls aware of the kinds of jobs that are available in a bank.

The career counseling was of particular interest to Fry-Timcke, whose daughter wants to be a teacher.

"That's why I want to bring her down here," she said. "I don't care if she's a cleaning lady as long as she knows what's available to her."

With that information Lanaire can "make good decisions for herself," she said.

"She spends most of her time at school, and it's been a very positive experience for her," Fry-Timcke said.

Lanaire helps the 1st- and 3rd-grade teachers instruct advanced students and even likes to play school at home using borrowed textbooks.

For years, of course, teaching and nursing were two of only a few professional careers open to women and, in some instances, remained open only as long as women remained single.

Over time, and with the help of the courts, careers in medicine, law, politics, business, the military and other traditionally male-dominated professions slowly opened to women.

But according to research by the Harvard Project on Women's Psychology and Girls' Development, the message some girls receive today is that they still aren't equal partners.

"As girls become ready to enter the public world, what they come to understand is that men control public life" while women's dominant role is at home, said Elizabeth Debold, a researcher with the Harvard Project.

"They're at a loss of how to negotiate the two," she said.

Wednesday's events were a primer on how it's done every day by women with whom the youngsters will someday work.

Kristin Chiles, 12, of Wheaton, spent the day with her mother, Janet, a nurses' coordinator at Central Du Page Hospital, Winfield.

"It's been awful," said Kristin, a 7th grader at Glen Crest Junior High School in Glen Ellyn. "I had to get up at 5:30 this morning. Then I went to meetings all day.

"She sits in an office. She goes to meetings. It's not as boring as school-but it's boring."

Kristin would have preferred one of the other jobs at the nurses' station. "Maybe answering the phone. That would be more exciting than what she does," Kristin said.

Kristin's own plan is to attend the Air Force Academy and become a fighter pilot. But she credited her mother with her own brand of bravery: "It takes strength to get up at 5:30 in the morning," she said.

For her part, Lanaire already knew a great deal about her mother's job before they stepped off the "L" at 8:23 a.m.

"Mostly . . . she helps people to get hired and reads their resumes" she said Wednesday morning between bites of toast and spoonfuls of strawberries, a treat reserved for special days.

And the purpose of a bank?

"Keeping money, saving money and protecting money," she said.

What she later found out was that banks have teachers too.

"I knew I wanted to be a teacher when I was 12," said Ginny Brickley, an assistant vice president in the human resource development division at Harris Bank.

"In those days women didn't have many" career choices, Brickley told the 32 girls seated before her during a discussion session Wednesday.

"After 15 years I wanted to do something else and found a job in a company where they wanted someone to do teaching. Only they didn't call it teaching," she said. "They called it training."

That struck a chord with Lanaire five hours later, after she had toured the currency room, had a glimpse of gold and silver bars and visited the trading floor.

This is what she said she learned after a day at work:

"I learned about how to conduct an interview.

"I learned all the things you need for a certain job and about what you don't need.

"That just being a teacher doesn't mean I can only teach in a school," she said. "There are many opportunities as a teacher."